Subnautica – Some Recommended First Steps

Some Recommended First Steps

You’ve just crash landed on an alien planet. Once you’ve put out the fire in your pod, you notice that all you can see around you is water and your crashed ship. Inside your lifepod are a few useful things to get you started:

A fabricator. This can get you anything you need, provided you have the required blueprints and resources.

• A fabricator. This can get you anything you need, provided you have the required blueprints and resources.
• A medkit fabricator. This will periodically generate medkits, which, when used, restore 50 health.
• A storage cabinet (the red thing that looks like a bench). This starts with two waters, two nutrient blocks, and two flares. You can store your own stuff inside once you get some.
• Broken secondary systems. Once repaired, all it really does is light up the lifepod a bit.
• A broken radio. Once repaired, transmissions will start coming in from other lifepods. You can unlock cool stuff from these and progress the story.

Now that you know about what you have, lets get some stuff you don’t have! Go ahead and jump down into the water by opening the hatch at the bottom of your lifepod.

Below you, you’ll see the colorful environment called the Safe Shallows. Although this is, as the name implies, one of the safest and shallowest places in the game, you still have to watch for a few things:

• Food and water. Unless you’re playing in freedom mode, you’ll need some. Even though your lifepod comes with some, you will find that you run out very fast. Hint: One fish, the bladderfish, can make water as well as food.
• Oxygen. You can’t hold your breath forever. Don’t go too deep, or you may not make it back to the surface in time.
• Dangerous creatures. Two creatures pose a threat to you in the Safe Shallows. The gasopod is the thing that looks a bit like a manatee, with green bubbles in its tail. Get too close, and it’ll release toxic gas. The crashfish. They live inside caves and will swim towards you and
  explode if you get to close. Hint:  Inside their “homes” is cave sulfur, which you need to get the repair tool.

Now that you have hopped in, you need some basic tools. Most of these basics are really easy to get. To get them, you need four basic resources, which you can find in abundance in and around the Safe Shallows:

• Titanium. Titanium comes mainly from scrap metal. You can find this metal salvage scattered along the sea floor. Each piece gives you four titanium in the fabricator.
• Copper. Copper comes mainly from limestone outcrops. These are little bits of rock sticking out of the sea floor. They can be a little hard to see, but don’t worry! The game directs you towards one of them when you get into the water, since you’ll need copper a lot.
• Acid mushrooms. These look like exactly what they sound like. Bright, colorful mushrooms scattered around the seabed. You’ll need them, but don’t fill your storage with them, since their super easy to gather.
• Creepvine seed clusters. These are actually found in the second biome that you should go to, the Creepvine Forest, which is adjacent to the Safe Shallows. Some creepvines grow glowing pods on them. Grab them! Beware of stalkers though; they have a nasty bite.

Let’s talk about making your starting equipment. Here’s what you need to collect:

• 5 titanium
• 1 copper
• 2 acid mushrooms
• 2 creepvine seed clusters

With these materials you can make:

• Scanner
• Survival knife
• Standard oxygen tank
• Fins

The scanner is the most useful tool to start with. When you find broken parts underwater, you can scan them with it. After scanning enough pieces of the same item, you’ll learn how to make that item yourself.

Now that you have these basics, here are a few good next steps:

• Get some more advanced tools and equipment, like the repair tool, habitat builder, seaglide, laser cutter, and high-capacity oxygen tank.
• Explore around! There’s dry land hidden somewhere…
• Go to the Aurora (crashed ship). Remember to make a radiation suit first.
• Find wrecks. There’s always a new cool blueprint to scan!
• Collect story elements. Collect logs from abandoned PDAs, the radio, and other technology that you scan.